


The Vampire Rabbit of Zootopia

by Boney_M



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Established Relationship, F/M, Vampire Judy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-29 07:50:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7676149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boney_M/pseuds/Boney_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the city where Anyone Can Be Anything, it turns out that a rabbit can be a vampire. Whether she likes it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Hopps to dispatch."

"Go ahead Hopps."

"I lost the suspect. Got a decent look at him. Some sort of medium canid. A jackal or a smaller wolf, maybe."

"Or a fox?"

"I know a fox when I see one, dispatch."

There was a chuckle from the other end of the radio. "Fair enough. That's about the end of your shift, isn't it? You were chasing the perp for a while."

Judy checked the clock, and was hugely relieved - but also worried - to find that it was almost the end of her shift. "Yes. Permission to drive the squad car home?"

"Let me check the motor pool." Judy crossed her fingers and hoped. "Sure, that's fine. Have a good weekend, Judy."

"Thanks."

Judy let go of the radio, utterly spent by the effort of pretending to be okay, and it clattered against the dashboard. Something was terribly wrong. All she remembered was responding to a report of an assault - a biting by a medium-sized predator, witnessed by a passerby - and she found some sort of canid looming over an unconscious young deer. It had fled, and though it was freakishly fast, she had managed to keep up with it. Then she had gone around a blind corner - stupid! - and been grabbed. After that, it was all a blur.

She could have sworn she had been bitten, but when she put a paw to her neck, it was unmarked. She had gotten away unscathed, then. That was why she hadn't reported it to dispatch. Because she didn't want to reveal that she'd gotten jumped by a larger mammal, and give them reason to doubt a bunny cop. No harm, no foul.

Except it was much more than that. Because the cold of the night didn't feel cold on her skin any more. And when she exhaled, the cloud of condensation was missing. And she had tried to find her own pulse, and failed. And she felt utterly consumed by thirst, and yet the drinkbottle she kept in the console revolted her.

With no idea what else to do, she texted Nick the words she thought she'd never need but knew would bring him in a heartbeat: help me.

\---

Nick arrived quickly. Or, at least, it had been quick according to the clock; to her, every minute had felt like an eternity as she tried to reconcile her boundless thirst and her inability to stand the thought of drinking water. When he finally arrived, dropped off by a taxi that had been blatantly breaching the speed limit, Judy felt relief flood through her. When he tore open the door and threw himself into the passenger seat as the taxi started to reverse out of the dimly-lit lane she was parked in, her relief was battered away by an entirely new feeling: hunger.

Nick smelled GOOD. He always smelled good, or at least, she thought so. But right now he didn't smell comfortable and warm, he smelled delicious. Unable to control herself, she closed the distance between herself and pressed her face into his fur, nuzzling at the tip of his chest poking out of his shirt. Nick started, but relaxed slightly. "I didn't realize it was that kind of help you wanted," Nick snarked, relief evident in his voice. "Do you have any idea how many road rules I got the taxi driver to break? I don't think the department would be happy if they found out it was for a booty call-"

"Nick," she gasped into his fur. "Something's wrong. I- I don't know what's happening."

"Judy, you- you're freezing cold!" His paws wrapped around her and pulled him into his chest, and tried to rub some warmth into her. "Literally actually holy-shit-how-are-you-still-conscious freezing cold! What happened? Why didn't you call an ambulance? I'm calling an ambulance." He fumbled for his phone, but Judy stopped him. She opened her mouth to explain, but instead she just inhaled the smell of him as she pressed her entire body against his chest and pressed her chin against the crook of his neck. She could feel his heart beating in his chest, strong and fast, and the rhythm of it hypnotized her. Some alien instinct guided her, and she nuzzled at his neck in a way she had so often before, but then - gently, lovingly - she bared her teeth and sank her fangs into his neck, and in an instant the sweetest, most satisfying sensation she had ever experienced flooded into her mouth and buzzed through her body, filling her with warmth and satisfaction and quelling the gnawing thirst.

Nick gasped, moaned, and sank back into the passenger seat, struggling weakly for just a moment. His arms never left her back, though, continuing to hold her against him. Some distant corner of her mind that wasn't consumed by the ecstasy of the moment clung to that. Perhaps it was some part of him accepting what was happening, showing her it was okay, she thought desperately.

And perhaps she was right.

 

\---

 

Nick awoke with a start, sitting bolt-upright in bed. Okay, he thought. In bed. His bed. So it must have been a dream.

That he was immediately tackled by a sobbing bunny didn't help clarify matters, though.

It took her quite a while to get her to calm down, and she had only done so after he had agreed to drink the large glass of water she handed him and let her take his pulse while she consulted the screen of her smartphone. As she did so, the warmth on his wrist from her paw reassured him that it had just been some sort of bizarre dream from whatever head trauma or illness had given him such weird dreams and had Judy fretting.

"What happened, Carrots? I can't remember whatever happened to me that's got you so worked up."

"Do you feel okay?" Judy asked in response, averting her eyes.

"Uh... I guess so. I mean, I'm a little chilly and out of breath, now that you mention it."

Judy glanced at her phone, and nodded. "That's normal."

"Normal for what?"

"So you don't remember anything?"

"Just some weird dream where you bit me." Nick smiled at Judy, but Judy looked away, her expression miserable. An uncomfortable suspicion started to form, and Nick lifted a paw to his neck, and found no bitemarks, but the fur of his neck was damp. With water, a sniff confirmed. Not blood.

"It- it wasn't a dream, Nick."

"You bit me?" Nick asked, confused. "Wait, does that mean the rest of it really happened? The you-being-icy-cold part? Because you didn't feel icy cold."

"It- I don't-" Judy took a deep breath. "Yes. I chased a suspect around a corner and he jumped me. He was faster than he should have been. Next thing I know, I wake up, and I don't feel the cold any more and I was so thirsty I was almost losing my mind. That's when I texted you."

Nick swung his legs off the edge of the bed and reached over to Judy, running his paw along her cheek, and she leaned into it out of long habit. He could feel warmth in her cheeks that contrasted with the cool of the night. "But you're not cold now."

"No, it stopped after I bit you and I- I drank your blood. Um. A lot of it. Judging by your symptoms, about a quarter of your blood, which is a ridiculous amount considering our relative sizes..." Judy reached out, took Nick's paw, and held it up to her neck so he could feel her pulse. It was there, sure enough, but at perhaps a fifth of normal. "That's the other thing. When I woke up, I... didn't have a pulse. And though it came back after I bit you, it's still way too low. Mine was always a bit lower than usual because I've always been pretty athletic but this is about a fifth of that."

"You didn't have a pulse?"

"I wasn't breathing, either. I mean, I was, but just out of habit, and I've tried not breathing and nothing happened."

Nick just stared at her, trying to wrap his mind around it all. He wouldn't believe it if he didn't still have an unnaturally slow pulse beating under his paw, and the memory of an icy-cold Judy snuggling into his chest. Distractedly, he said "Mum told me a story once that she said her mum had told her. An old story about witches with two hearts, who send out their souls at night to drink blood, and if killed would return to life..."

Judy nodded. "There's an old bunny legend that's sort of similar. The Bad King that kept escaping his grave to drink the blood of his subjects, until he was killed by a sword made of yew and buried upside-down."

"So... you're dead?" The words sounded strange to Nick, even as he said them. He'd had nightmares about Judy dying before, but they'd never had her discussing the matter with him after the fact.

"Maybe? I mean I still don't need to breathe, but maybe your blood fixed the rest of it." Your blood, she had said. Nick's blood. It should have sounded bizarre, but for some reason it sounded entirely natural to her.

"It could be a superpower. Wouldn't be the stupidest hero origin story I've heard."

"The Amazing Bunny That Doesn't Have To Breathe?"

"Well, it's kind of niche. Maybe you can become an astronaut?"

The familiar banter calmed them, and before long Judy was snuggled into Nick's side while they chatted, desperately trying to build a bulwark of words between them and the bizarre happenings of the night. Maybe they'd wake up in the morning and everything would be back to normal, both of them thought separately and desperately. Maybe all of this would just be a really weird dream in the morning.

But they both knew it wouldn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of notes for this one...
> 
> The name of the story is kind of generic, but it's actually based on the Vampire Rabbit of Newcastle, which is a strange gargoyle above one of the doors of a building adjoining the Cathedral of St Nicholas in Newcastle. After I stumbled across that little tidbit, the name grew on me.
> 
> This is largely based on the Vampire: The Masquerade from the old World of Darkness. There's going to have to be a fair amount of adjustment to make the differing species and history and politics and a hundred other things fit, though, and chances are the rest of the WoD are going to be left out. Also, I reserve the right to change various mechanics if I think it'll make for a better story.
> 
> The bunny vampire legend is based upon a Celtic legend of Abhartach, in a nod to the sorta-Celt-y bunny tribes in A Rabbit Clan's Fox, and Nick's one is based on the Romanian strigoi. I'm assuming that with actual vampires keeping a lid on things, vampire legends never became mainstream in Vamp Zootopia, but most animals have legends with some roots in truth passed on in their oral traditions.
> 
> According to Wikipedia, people can lose about a quarter of their blood before things get dangerous, so I ported those assumptions onto the mammals of Zootopia. But seriously, don't try this at home. I am not a doctor, and neither is Wikipedia.
> 
> Nick and Judy have an established romantic relationship here. I'm not going to say that it's a direct spin-off of Winter Snuggles in case the two diverge at some later point, but it's not entirely unrelated.
> 
> Plot holes: Why didn't Judy have a partner with her? Because I couldn't figure out how to make the plot work otherwise. Why did it only take about an hour or so for Judy to become a vampire, where it takes about a day in VtM lore? Same reason. Or something to do with relative size, I guess.


	2. Chapter 2

As the night went on, Judy's heartbeat slowed, and her temperature dropped. Her sense of touch dulled. At one point she realized that she'd stopped breathing and hadn't even noticed. About three hours after she had fed from Nick, she had returned to the state she had been in when she had first texted Nick, minus the ravenous thirst.

"Well," she reported, "the bad news is I'm dead-ish again. The good news is I'm still not thirsty, so those two aren't connected." Nick held his paw to her cheek to see for herself that she'd dropped to room temperature, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his lap to warm her back up. "Nick, it's fine, I don't even feel the cold."

"I know, you said you didn't," he replied, a catch in his voice. "It just bothers me to feel you so cold."

Judy opened her mouth to reply, then gave in and snuggled closer to him. While she didn't feel cold, she still enjoyed the closeness. They spent an indeterminate amount of time in each other's arms, simply enjoying the moment. But Judy couldn't keep her mind blank for long, and she started thinking again.

Chances are she could never be a mother. Okay. She hadn't really planned to be, especially since she and Nick had gotten together. The thought of eating was repulsive to her, so she would probably be able to save a fair bit on grocery bills, although fulfilling her new dietary requirements was probably going to be an even bigger pain. And when she hadn't recently fed, her sense of touch dulled. That was going to be a shame, though she still found snuggling to be enjoyable on an emotional level.

Wait.

Judy's eyes flew open and dread filled her. What about sex?

Her sense of touch was completely dulled. And normally when she was snuggled up to Nick and flooded with his smell she felt at least a little bit worked up, but right now, nothing. She wriggled in Nick's embrace, trying to garner some sort of sensation, but while she could register the feel of Nick's fur on hers, it was muted, and had none of the luxurious feeling that she had enjoyed so while snuggling with Nick.

But while she was focused on her sense of touch, some entirely new and alien instinct surfaced. She did... something. She had no way to describe the action exactly, though it felt halfway between her heart skipping a beat and flexing a muscle she didn't have. And she felt warmth flood through her body, and the feeling of closeness to Nick returned. Not just the knowledge of him being there, but the wonderful feeling of fur on fur that made her want to live forever in Nick's arms.

Judy closed her eyes, trying to wrap her mind around entirely new senses. She could feel her blood - 'her' blood, it had been Nick's blood before she had sucked it out of him - permeating her body, filling it with warmth and sensation. Her mouth, which had previously been dry, had started to provide saliva again, and a quick check with her paw (ignoring Nick's raised eyebrows) revealed that another, more private part of her anatomy had started producing fluids again, too.

But she could also feel herself becoming lessened, too. The blood in her was very slowly being burned away by this effort, and a tiny hungry sensation had started to grow in her stomach, and she had no doubt that the hunger would grow as the blood was spent.

She opened her mouth to share this with Nick, but instead let herself be swept away on a tide of reawakened desires, and moved in to kiss Nick.

\---

Some time later, Judy and Nick lay sprawled on the sheets, their paws still clasped and breathing heavily as the cool night air played across their bare bodies and cooled them off. Judy finally regained her breath and panted, "well, that still works."

"I'll say," Nick responded, trying and failing to haul himself upright with a groan. "I think you may have actually done some damage. Nothing major, but I'm probably going to feel that in the morning."

"Not that I'm complaining, but I think that used some of the blood I took from you. I feel... less full than I was. Less whole."

Nick rolled over onto his side to look at Judy. "What, so you burned some blood calories or something?"

Judy looked back at him, and realized that she hadn't explained her discovery and had instead just jumped Nick. She filled him in and he looked at her thoughtfully. "This could be tricky. Back in my misspent youth I donated blood a time or two for drinking money, and they said that it takes a couple months to restore lost blood fully. Unless that stomach-full lasts you a really long time, I don't think I can be your meal ticket, especially if I'm going to keep being your partner as well."

"You really think I can still be a police officer?"

"Well, we've got the rest of the weekend to see if any other downsides surface, but so far I don't see why not. Besides, it's probably best to pretend everything is normal. Until I have some idea how paranoid to be, I'm going to default to 'extremely'. Lionheart was locking mammals away in his secret laboratory just for going feral, so who knows what all this would merit."

Judy pulled Nick to her impulsively, ignoring his yelp as he was dragged across the sheets. "Thank you, Nick. If I had to handle this alone..."

Nick loosened Judy's arms from around his neck, then returned the hug. "Hey, long as I'm around, you don't have to handle ANYTHING alone. And I think you might have gotten stronger from all this. I mean, physically. I don't remember you being able to drag me around like your plushy before."

\---

The rest of the night was spent experimenting. Though she didn't feel up to going out to a gym to test things out, everything felt much lighter than she remembered, and she was able to bodily lift Nick without too much effort, which she was fairly sure she couldn't do before. When she tried to find a ceiling to the effect by lifting the bed with Nick still on it, she struggled for a moment before that blend of hunger and warmth filled her muscles and her strength increased substantially. So, another superpower. And another drain on her limited supply of Nick-blood.

With care, she tried pricking her paw with a knife. She barely felt the cut, and very little blood welled up. And as she focused on the cut, the warm hunger filled it and it closed up before her eyes, and without thinking she licked the tiny stain of blood off her paw. She looked up to find Nick looking at her, and thankfully, there was no disgust in his eyes. She didn't think she could have handled it if there was. But there was only sympathy and curiosity.

"We got sidetracked on the blood issue earlier."

Judy grimaced. "I'd like for that to stay sidetracked, but I guess that won't help."

"If you do get hungry again... well, when I woke up, I barely remembered any of it. It felt even vaguer than a dream. But I do remember that when you bit me it felt good. Really good. So it should be possible to, well..."

"Give someone a night they will forget?"

"Or we could taze them in an alley and you can drink your fill. The one-night stand approach feels like a lesser evil." Judy stared into nothing thoughtfully, and Nick continued. "You could do it yourself, but you'd have the best luck with mammals near your own size, so you couldn't really take much off them before it got dangerous. So I'll dust off the ol' Wilde charm and go hunting for you."

"Nick-"

"No protests, sweetheart. This isn't your problem, this is our problem."

For the second time that night, Judy threw herself at Nick.

\---

As dawn approached, Judy found herself getting tired with shocking suddenness. Nick shrugged it off at first - it had been a long night, after all, and had started to mention adrenaline before he'd gotten sidetracked into wondering aloud whether that sort of thing still applied. As the first rays of the sun started to peek over the horizon, she had been partially tuned out and enjoying the sound of Nick's voice, but the first faint indirect rays of sunlight creeping into the room awoke some primal, instinctive fear that shredded any feeling of fatigue. Barely able to stop herself from throwing herself to the ground and crawling under the bed, she interrupted Nick's musings, her voice slightly shrill. "Nick. I think sunlight might be bad."

Nick looked from Judy to the ray of light on the wall. "Well, the old story did say they only did their thing at night. Maybe you're nocturnal now."

"It feels a lot more dramatic than that. It's like there's some terrified feral animal inside me." Before she could stop herself, she leaned forward and extended a trembling paw towards the shaft of light. The second it touched it, she pulled back with a choked shriek of pain as the smell of burning fur filled the room, and an instant later Nick had bounded to his feet and pulled the curtains shut.

Though the pain was agonizing, the instant of exposure to pre-dawn light hadn't done too much damage. The fur of a tiny portion of her paw had burned away, and the flesh beneath looked shiny and pink - like she had gotten too close to a candle. But if such a tiny amount of light had done that much to her...

She met Nick's worried look. "It's definitely more than being nocturnal." With the threat hidden away, the fatigue returned to her with a shocking suddenness, and she found herself collapsing back on the bed. Nick was at her side in an instant, and she smiled up at him. "It's okay. Just tired." She reached up and pulled at him, and he allowed himself to be tugged into her embrace. An instant later, she was in the deepest sleep she had ever known.

\---

"Chief? It's Judy."

"What do you want."

"I, uh, wanted to transfer to the Nocturnal District PD. Because, well-"

"Don't care. Clawhauser will get the paperwork done. I assume your fox will be moving with you?"

"Yes, Chief."

"Your new sergeant will be in touch. Anything else?"

"No, Chief."

"Good." And with that, he hung up.

Judy looked over her shoulder and smiled at the still-dozing Nick. "Okay. I've still got a job. I can get 'food'. Nick's backing me up. I can do this." Judy stood up from the bed and moved to the window, looking out at Zootopia's illuminated skyline, hunger gnawing at her gut. The only world she would be able to inhabit from now on, since the day was denied to her.

She took a deep, unnecessary breath. She would have to start looking for an apartment in the Nocturnal District. But first? She and Nick would hunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With that, I'm marking this story complete. I never intended this to be a full story, but merely a foundation and jumping off point for a story with a vampire Judy. And right now, I've got no idea what that story would even be.
> 
> One day in the hopefully-not-so-distant future when I've got less irons in the fire, or when inspiration strikes, I'll return to this idea and do more with it.
> 
> Technical details: In VtM terms, Judy is a 13th-generation Caitiff with Potence and two Disciplines yet to be decided.


End file.
